Caught Up in a Whirlwind of Black and White
by chraezanty1317
Summary: Lily crosses Thirteen's path as Nina Sayers is taken to the Princeton–Plainsboro Teaching Hospital after her debut performance.
1. Chapter 1 Impressions

Her vision was hazy, distorted; it was reminiscent of looking through the glass of a window during the pouring rain. One could only make out vague silhouettes, but even all of those melted together until limbs became twice as long as under normal circumstances and humans ceased to have features, save eyes or mouths. Their faces were a blank, streaked through with water.

"Nina? Can you hear me? Say something, please!"

She was still disoriented to the degree she couldn't immediately place the voice. It was undeniably female, yes, and reasonably young as well. Familiar, but then again so was the nagging sensation she had not _completely_ abandoned herself in dance yet, that she would not ever be good enough to be the Swan Queen.

Only that was ridiculous, because Thomas had _chosen_ her. She had danced, she had _soared_, flying high above the heads of her audience, leaving them utterly speechless as she unfolded her wings and enchanted them one by one. They had all fallen under her spell, and she had been perfect.

Nina smiled.

* * *

"What's happening here? What the_ hell_ have you injected her with?" Lily was _not_ pleased and the strange brunette was not making the situation any better, only acknowledging her from time to time with impatient glances as she refused to explain what exactly was going on.

"It's just something to calm her. She's still bleeding severely and needs immediate - Chase, finally!" The ballet dancer groaned as a blonde doctor strode in like a male model for white lab coats, if such a thing existed. She had been getting somewhere with the other woman, a way to understand at least in part what chances Nina had of surviving the mysterious wound that had magically appeared just in time for the White Swan's suicide, when _that _jackass started giving what he would call explanations, Lily was sure. Only they were filled with so many medical terms any random doctor - the usual, everyday life kind - would not have understood them if his life depended on it, she mused with the sarcasm almost audibly dripping from the words used. Were they _trying _to further confuse and frustrate her?

"You know what, I'm outta here. Tell me when we've got to the information that's useful.", she interrupted Chase and drew the attention of all the company present as she strode out of Nina's room with her pace nearing a run.

She was sick of the hospital already and she had only been in here for five minutes. She wished she could allow herself to go to some random club and drown all her worries in tequila and the scent of a one-night-stand's perfume, but things were more complicated than that.

Lily had been nursing her coffee - black, no sugar - and sitting on the ridiculously uncomfortable chair in the corridor outside Nina's room for a good while when she heard footsteps. She didn't bother to look up to see who it was and merely buried her head in her hands and sighed. The moment passed and she raised her head again.

"We've subdued her for now, she should be set for stitches about this second. It's not life-threatening and she'll be able to walk soon." Recognition of the voice. At least it was better than nothing.

The ballet dancer pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation. What was the reason for her headache - the whole Swan Lake ordeal or the massive alcohol consumption from the night before? _Damn, I knew I should've taken the Vicodin._

She was caught off guard by laughter. The presence of the brunette doctor set her on edge - didn't she have places to be, prescriptions to write? No, sir, she did not, she was apparently free to laugh at visitors all she wanted.

"Hey, you got a problem?", Lily hissed, a bit more aggressive than she had intended.

The doctor met her gaze levelly. "You just said that out loud. It's just that my boss would _love _to hear about this."

Her interest ever so slightly piqued, Lily turned her body around so she was facing the other woman. "Why?"

The answer came with a shrug. "Medical genius with a drug addiction. I suppose you'll see him at some point, it's pretty likely he'll grace this particular patient with his attention seeing as she is clearly mentally unstable. He loves those, anything to keep him from being bored." She winced apologetically, but Lily was certain it was not entirely genuine.

"She really is, though. You've heard the nonsense she's been muttering for the last half an hour."

"Yeah. So what's your deal, anyway?"

"Sorry?"

"You know - don't pretend to be so innocent, it only comes off as pathetic."

When Lily was met with no more than incomprehension and silence, she went on. She couldn't help but smirk, however, the corner of her mouth barely twitching. Still, the doctor seemed to notice it well enough. "The drugs, lady. Bloodshot eyes, restlessness, an emotional low in general. You might be taking ecstasy from time to time or every few hours for all I know, I'm not the one with years of med school under my belt, but I _can _tell you've been using some during the last-" She made a show of leaning her head to the right side in faux contemplation, "twenty-four hours."

The other woman shrugged. "I can't believe I have to say this to the second person in twenty minutes now, but I don't have a drug problem."

Lily held up her hands in surrender, palms facing the doctor. "Hey, I'm not judging, chill out. Just making small talk."

The stranger snorted. "Do you usually talk to people about their habits concerning substances that are technically illegal?"

A devilish grin spread over the dancer's face. "Maybe. You could also leave if it bothers you."

This time, the laughter Lily heard had a bitter undertone. She hadn't really known a laugh could have one, but apparently it could alright. "Thanks, but no thanks. While we're here chatting anyway, what's _your _deal?"

She groaned. "Well, my head is _killing _me for one thing."

The doctor grinned. "I might just be able to help. Fancy an IV by any chance?"

* * *

As she lay there, arms folded behind her head, the ceiling slowly started to become blurred. She smiled; the injection was obviously affecting her and she felt sublime already.

"So, your boss allows you to dope random visitors up whenever you feel bored?"

"Let's just say it wouldn't be the first time he fires and re-hires me again over the course of two days."

A moment passed, the silence literally echoing and bouncing off between the walls as the deafening tick-tocking of the clock continued on and prodded her brain like an annoying, invisible mosquito. There was the distinct possibility that the drugs were talking, though. "What's your name?"

"Thirteen.", came the amused response.

Lily simultaneously frowned and fought the urge to burst out laughing. "Cut the crap. I'm Lily."

"Remy."

* * *

Both brunettes were blissfully ignorant of Nina Sayers regaining consciousness.


	2. Chapter 2 Calm After The Storm

By the time the nausea had subsided enough for her to have the courage to attempt sitting up on the bed, her room was empty. She could feel it the way that she knew she was currently losing weight in both the form of fat and muscle. Thomas would _not_ be impressed the next time she showed up for training. Veronica would sneer gleefully and her mother... Nina did not want to think about that particular aspect of her future at that moment, so she pushed the thought away to the furthest corner of her mind.

She took her time and, to her surprise, actually managed to prop herself up on her elbows into a semi-sitting position. Considering the strength the ballet dancer had acquired through years of practice, especially by way of comparison to her height and physique, this accomplishment was pathetic, but she gritted her teeth and promised herself not to do anything overly stupid.

Nina found that there were no curtains in front of her window and she could only make out the vaguest shapes around her room, even as her eyes had become well adjusted to the dark. She figured it must be around midnight.

She padded over to the bathroom door, shivering as her bare feet crept lightly over the icy floor, and blindly fumbled for the light switch. She watched her reflection in the mirror and took a moment to observe her pupil constricting at the sudden flash of light. The fluorescent light shattered any hopes of an illusion - her eyes were sunken deep into her sockets, her features haggard and her pale complexion appeared about as healthy as that of a skeleton. She sighed, weary, and went back to bed to wait for another day to begin.

* * *

"Hey, deer in the headlights."

The smooth voice startled her and she looked up in delight. Only now did she connect the dots to realise that the girl casually leaning against the glass door's frame was the same one who had pleaded with her to wake up in her delirium. She had always seemed nonchalant about everything, strong-willed, determined and getting every single thing she desired with no exception so that it felt surreal to Nina to even see her standing there as if she was genuinely concerned.

"Lily!" There was warmth in the ballet dancer's voice.

"Surprised?" Teasing, just a little. "Care to tell my what exactly made you think the dramatic touch of a near-death experience added to your performance?" She did not expect an honest answer, she was just toying with her, mismatched eyes glinting like that of a cat in the darkness. She strolled towards the bed, shutting the door with her hip, with half of a grin playing on her lips.

Nina smiled wistfully. "I would have been truly perfect."

The silence seemed deafening, even though it could not have lasted for more than ten seconds. A moment passed.

"The _hell_ you would have been! You weren't there for the curtain call, you have a gaping wound in your stomach that'll leave you scarred for life and you would have lost everything you've ever worked and literally bled for! Get a grip, Swan Queen."

For less than a second, Nina recoiled at the sight of Lily, who seemed more like Odile than ever as her dark eyes blazed with fury. She flinched at the shouts cutting through the air like knives and her own voice lost the dreamy, far-away quality as she lowered it to a murmur. "It could have been a hallucination, just as well." She raised her hands in surrender.

"What?" Lily's head turned sharply around to face her once more after it had been immersed in shadow a mere moment before.

"I've-" Nina swallowed and beckoned her colleague nearer, unable to shake the feeling of being watched. She was sick to her stomach independent of the deep gash oozing crimson blood and the back of her neck tingled, the unpleasant sensation associated with pulling feathers out of her skin. Finally, the flow of words coming from her mouth was impossible to stop even as she grimaced at the semi-real memories they invoked. "I've been seeing things long before the debut. I didn't think much of it, after all, we were all stressed and sleep-deprived. My reflection turning its head when I was perfectly still, my feet those of a swan, little things like that. They disappeared almost as soon as I blinked. Then, I started to actually _become _the Black Swan. The time you took me out clubbing I was certain you'd come home with me, only we hadn't slept with each other, you told me as much. Another hallucination had me killing you as to hinder you from going on stage as my alternate. Wouldn't have been all that far-fetched to assume the wound had been a part of it."

Contrary to what Nina had been expecting, Lily merely sighed and settled herself into the chair next to her bed, kicking off her combat boots as she did so. She raised an eyebrow as she noticed the other woman's expression. "What, you don't expect me to spend the night with these uncomfortable things on, do you?"

* * *

Still, Nina's grasp on reality slipped from time to time.

It was never as serious as her homicidal hallucinations, not by a long shot, but it served to unnerve her just as well. On most occasions, it was limited to flashes of confusion and momentary panic. One second she would be regarding her slender hands - her skin was showing cracks, she would have to fix that, only she was not certain if she would bother in the end, after all - in contemplation to gather her thoughts, only when she raised her head to meet Lily's gaze once more, something had changed. From the tiniest smudge of mascara in the corner of her left eye to her sweater changing color from black to dark red to it being the dead of night when it had been morning mere seconds before - they all formed a chaotic cluster of pieces that assembled themselves to a puzzle in painful slow motion.

The doctors had taken her off the pain killers and that was the rational explanation for her - what? Short-term amnesia that made sunday morning blend directly into 2 a.m. on Tuesday?

It was definitely a more comforting thought than the one that she had truly gone insane.

She clung to Lily, only conscious of it at times, but since she was the single constant in her messy life, she saw no other way out. If Thomas or her mother dropped by for a word, those moments were swallowed by her memory gaps so they might as well have not ever been present at the hospital.

Another familiar factor emerged in the form of a doctor - Lily called her Thirteen. To Nina, however, it seemed as if the ballet dancer was making fun of the other woman each time she used that name. She appeared to be there each time something went wrong, and not knowing why set Nina on edge. When Lily wasn't there to mockingly share the company's gossip, that was.

When she was finally discharged, the Swan Queen almost couldn't believe it. She had come to regard her hospital bed as a second home, a place where she was allowed to watch all available Swan Lake performances recorded on DVD till her head and eyes ached so much she swore to never lay eyes on the television screen again only to resume her activity as insomnia would not let her out of its clutches, which was usually around five a.m.

It was not_ Thirteen - _she put imaginary quotation marks around the obvious alias each time it entered her head - but a strange man in a cane that announced the happy news. She had ignored him at first, assuming he was another patient same as her, lost in one of the biggest hospitals she had ever entered. She was wrong.

"Scuttle away now, you're free to. Shrink says you might not be a total nutcase and therefore entitled to be let loose on the world. Though I'd simply _love _for you to stay here just a bit longer so I can hear Wilson's glorious complaints about how he knows the Dance of the Little Swans by heart and backwards, whatever that means, for another week. I must say I owe whoever put you into the room directly across from his office a drink."

Nina was dumfounded and stunned, but got up nevertheless. The last thing she heard from a nurse was to _Please ignore him, whatever he says. _When questioned if the man in question was an intern fooling around, the nurse snorted. _He's Gregory House, one of the most highly acclaimed doctors on the planet, I'd wager._

Five minutes later, she was walking out of the PPTH with her head up high, inhaling the city's asphyxiating fumes. The rain had become a light drizzle and, on impulse, she brought her face up to look at the sky, tiny droplets flowing down her face and washing away the stress of the last few weeks.

After rummaging through her handbag for quite a while, quite unaware of the fact that she was standing in the middle of the main road, she found her phone. She did not need much time to find the number she wanted - she did not have many connections other than her mother and, ironically, she was the last person whose company she desired at the moment.

Her thumb hovered over the letter _L _for a good fifteen seconds before she pressed _Send_.

**Where are you?**


	3. Chapter 3 Coffee

Lily jolted awake, arms flailing comically in the air as she brought up her hands to cover her ears and steady herself. The desk right next to her bed was vibrating and it took the ballet dancer a moment before she made the connection between it and her black cell phone. The display spelled out **1 new message **in bold letters.

Groaning and her head pounding as if she had been knocked out cold by a professional kickboxer, the brunette snatched the device from her furniture and brushed her hair from her forehead. Absent-mindedly humming, she opened the message and was immediately brought out of her sleepy daze as she saw who it was from.

**Where are you?**

_Aw, shit. _It had finally happened - something seriously bad had happened while she had not been around and now Nina felt disappointed, if she had not gone completely batshit crazy already. One glance at the green alarm clock told Lily it was noon. Why had she slept so late again? No matter. She had an obligation to get to New Jersey as quickly as humanly possible and pick up the broken pieces as well as she could.

The world had lost a bet, Lily was sure, because it took her a full hour longer to get to the Princeton–Plainsboro Teaching Hospital since literally every bus was late and every cabbie was incredibly busy. She was sure that a woman who had been strolling through a park with her five-years-old daughter had only barely held back from making a scene as the ballet dancer raced past them, muttering an imaginative sequence of profanity not-exactly-under-her-breath.

She must have been quite a sight to behold, leaning against the reception desk and desperately gasping for air as if she had just run a marathon. Her cheeks were burning as if she had been out in the snow and she, to her embarrassment, had to write her request to see Miss Sayers down on actual paper for there to be successful communication between her and the nurse (who was obviously annoyed and holding on by a thread).

After ten minutes of heated discussion - that may or may not have included a minimum of one participant raising his or her voice to a volume that could have, hypothetically, been defined as screaming (only if one was sensitive, naturally) - Lily was seething with anger. She stormed off without another word to the nurse and was about to try her luck with a cab when she hit another body with full force. Both stumbled, but Lily was able to grab the other person by the shoulders as to prevent that person's fall.

She had not expected the face to be familiar. "Remy! Jeez, watch where you're walking, will ya?" The ballet dancer was grinning like a Chesire cat as she threw her arms around the doctor's neck and enveloped her in a spontaneous hug.

Thirteen disentangled herself easily and smirked. "Didn't expect to see you here. What are you up to?"

Lily shrugged. "Would you tell the nurse at the reception to get her facts straight? She told me Nina had been discharged, but that's freaking impossible."

The brunette shook her head slightly. "She _has _been discharged, though, believe me. Didn't she tell you?"

The Swan Queen's alternate's mouth snapped shut and she started drawing patterns on the floor with her foot, eyes averted. "Not exactly."

"I thought you guys were the closest of friends?"

Lily was just about to correct her and laugh. Because of course_, _she didn't _dislike_ Nina, but she was no more than a fleeting acquaintance. The words died in her throat as she realized the lie and sighed.

"If you're looking for her, why don't you just call her?", Remy started again.

"I've left my phone at home. I'd try her mom, but she's damn near a psycho, so... forget it. What's going on with you? The last time I really talked to you, well-" she grinned at the memory of the not-quite-stolen hour in the IV room, "I might not have been in full possession of my mental capacity."

The doctor seemed tense all of a sudden as her eyes were fixed on a point next to Lily's left ear. "Starbucks? I'm buying."

The ballet dancer was confused, but never one to reject a free coffee. "Count me in, literally."

Thirteen took no notice of Lily's admittedly corny joke as she briskly made her way out of the hospital while the other brunette was left to run after her. "Hey, mind telling me who it is we're fleeing from?"

"House."

By the time she took the time to look back over her shoulder, there was no one extraordinary to be seen, but if she had been to ask Remy, she would have been told that a man with a cane was watching her every move and grinning like he had just won the lottery.

* * *

Lily sipped her Honey Latte with relish. When she saw Thirteen's sour expression, she closed her eyes and moaned exaggeratedly for dramatic effect. "This is _delicious._"

"I'm glad. You can choke on it for all I care."

Lily's eyes opened abruptly at that only to see Remy doubling over with laughter. "Your face right there was _priceless_, thanks for that. Worth the outrageous price for sure. For one second you really thought I had put something toxic in your drink, hm?"

The ballet dancer smoothed her hair to keep up appearances and wagged a finger at her accusingly. "You're just playing with me." Her eyes, however, were glinting in good humor. She had the nagging feeling that she had forgotten something of significance, but couldn't for the life of her remember what it was, much less what role she had to play. She found that another sip of the warm, liquid patch of heaven wiped all of it away just fine.

"So, for real. What is it about your boss to make everyone look for an emergency exit?"

Thirteen rolled her eyes and stuffed half of the Morning Glory muffin she had ordered into her mouth. She chewed slowly, regarding Lily from under her eyelashes as she slightly lowered her head. "Other than his personality, his snide remarks, his sense of superiority that might, to some degree, even be justified? He keeps trying to mess with me and find data on each of his employees. He even hired a PI, so that should already tell you a lot. You'd think that being a junkie himself, he'd ignore my partying. He's like a child who has found a toy it simply can't quite reach, so he takes it out on the other kids." She sighed and nodded her head towards Lily, obviously not keen on the subject. There was more, but there was no use in pressing if she was shutting down. "Why were you surprised when Lorraine - the nurse - thought you were tramp, again?"

The ballet dancer inhaled sharply and prepared herself to be scandalised when she looked down at her body and took her appearance in. The shop window of a near boutique enhanced the laughable contrast between the two women clearly. Lily gritted her teeth as her eyes seized up Remy's jeans and blouse that looked downright luxurious in comparison to her own bleached tank top and leggings ripped at her right knee. The fact that she was wearing flip flops didn't do much to make her situation better, either. She briefly regarded the doctor's ankle boots and straight hair and almost hit her head against the table when she saw her own messy bun. Where had she had her head this morning, forgot it at the ballet studio by any chance?

"I was in a hurry.", she murmured and raised the cup to her lips again as to partly hide her blush.

Remy laughed, only she was not laughing _at _Lily. The fingers of her right hand brushed the brunette's knuckles in a comforting gesture.

"Come on."

"What?", Lily mumbled around a mouthful of coffee.

"We're going to find Nina, okay?"


End file.
